Decaying corpse at funeral home deepens a family's pain

When Harvey Vaughan died last month after a long illness, his family scraped together what little money they had for a funeral service and cremation.

His brothers and cousins had visited him every weekend during the months he lay in a nursing home, suffering from chronic pulmonary obstructive disease. They tried to make him comfortable. They tried to keep him smiling.

After Vaughan, 69, drew his final breath, his brother Satavio Natividad said, the nursing home sent the body to Hawkins Funeral Home in West Philadelphia.

The family had no insurance. In its grief, the relatives pooled their money. They were able to pay funeral director Blair Hawkins $2,300 for a funeral service Aug. 21 and cremation the next day, Natividad said.

On Monday, two weeks after the funeral, Hawkins called him. Natividad had to sign papers before his brother could be cremated, he explained. Natividad made his way to the funeral home at 53d and Vine Streets.

By the time he got there, police had swarmed the facility. Bewildered, Natividad asked Hawkins what was going on.

"He told me that my brother was still inside," Natividad said.

Hawkins was arrested Tuesday for abuse of a corpse after state investigators, acting on a tip, showed up at his funeral home and insisted on inspecting the facility.

They found three bodies - one of them Harvey Vaughan's - decomposing in an embalming room. There were two bags filled with human organs. There was no refrigeration in the facility, no exhaust system to vent embalming fumes or the stench of decay.

Hawkins insisted to reporters at the scene that the entire incident was a misunderstanding.

But state officials said he had been operating Hawkins Funeral Home without a required license from the state, though he himself had a valid license to direct funerals.

The funeral home was previously known as the Gaither Funeral Home, and under that name it has a valid license, state officials said.

John C. Gaither, who ran the Gaither Funeral Home, said Monday night that he was "appalled" by what had happened at his former business. He said Hawkins asked to go into business with him last fall, but the deal had never been finalized.

Then, in June, he said, he learned that Hawkins had been operating out of the funeral home, using Gaither's business name without his permission.

Gaither said he had removed his name from the business.

The Hawkins Funeral Home, as Hawkins was calling it when he was arrested Tuesday, has never been licensed, state officials said.

State investigators were conducting their own investigation of the business Tuesday.

Such inspections have increased since last week, state officials said, when another funeral home in the city - this one in Strawberry Mansion - was found to have stored three badly decayed bodies in a garage near the property. No charges have been filed in that case, but the state is investigating.

"We realize that this is a very important issue to people who are already grieving," said Wanda Murren, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State. "We take this very seriously. We're doing everything we can to address the situation."

In addition to increasing inspections of funeral homes, she said, the state is examining the status of the licenses of all of Pennsylvania's 1,600 funeral homes.

A state inspector arrived at the Hawkins Funeral Home around 2:30 p.m. Monday after receiving a tip about an unlicensed funeral home.

Initially, police said, Hawkins tried to bar the inspector from the room where embalmings take place. But the inspector was adamant, and, once inside the room, found Harvey Vaughan's body in a coffin, another man's body on a gurney, and a third man's corpse in a body bag, police said.

Two unmarked, "nonmedical" bags nearby contained human organs, police said.

Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives said police had identified Vaughan's body and that of the man on the gurney. The body of the third man has not been identified.

Neither the body on the gurney nor the one in the body bag had been embalmed, Walker said.

By state law, funeral directors are required to embalm or refrigerate bodies within 24 hours of receiving them. The body on the gurney had been at the funeral home since Aug. 26, Walker said.

The organs in the bags belonged to several unidentified people, Walker said.

"They were not properly packaged, nor were they properly disposed of, nor were they buried with the body, which they should have been," Walker said.

In the heat of the past week, Walker said, even Vaughan's body, which had been embalmed, had started to decay. He said police had served a search warrant on the facility to identify the bodies and return them to their families for a proper burial or cremation.

For Vaughan's family, relatives said, that may not be possible.

He was a good man, they said - a longshoreman for 35 years, a father of five, a caring brother. They had done what they could to give him a respectful send-off.

They say they spent all they could afford on his funeral and a cremation that never took place.

Harvey Vaughan's body is at the Medical Examiner's office now, in a proper refrigerator. It will stay there until his family can come up with the money to cremate him.

"Until we find somebody to help," Natividad said.

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@aubreyjwhelan